Visit of the BOM

Hi there,

A few days ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend with some works colleagues a visit of the Bureau of Meteorology also known as BOM .
In fact as a very keen fisherman, I have the link saved on my personal computer, so I can alway check the forecast before ridding my push bike to go fishing in the early hours of the morning.
No point to start pedaling in the dark, if it is going to rain hard and long in the next hour.

I had checked their web site so many time, and now I was going to be able to see where the information came from, and how it was collated.
So you can guess my excitement when the proposition to visit their local office was offered to me.

This year is a La Nina year which might bring lot of heavy rain and maybe even a cyclone... Lets hope not...
But I can only guess that this is one of the reason that we had the luck to get invited to see the place.

So as we arrived we were given a tour of the offices, and were told that a balloon was going to be released and we were going to see that.
The place where the balloon is launched, made me think of a Dalek factory...

Daleks could be made in there...

Then one of my work mate had the honour of launching the balloon...

This may seems a bit of an anti climax to some of you, but really, how many of you have ever released a balloon knowing it was going to go more than a few kilometres straight up in the blue sky. 

And expand as it rise, to be as big as a building before blowing up and falling back to the ground.

And be tracked by a radar, and send back information from up there?

...

I would have loved to do it, but I also wanted to get a few snaps of it happening...

So no surprise there, I choose the snaps.

So here is just a little pic of it.

It shows the ballon, the reflective material under the ballon so the radar can track it, hanging to a piece of string, the little box that transmit information back to the guys in the BOM, and a moon crescent, in a blue sky.

And this is what I liked about it, the moon crescent is mirrored on the side of the balloon, by the morning light.

It is like if it was a text book image to explain why at time, we only see a moon crescent and not a full moon, like in a book for dummies.

Maybe it is just me, but it worked for me.

Balloon and moon crescent.

After that we saw many other things, and I am sure that all the people on the tour had a great morning, as it was very interesting.

Sorry for such a small amount of images, and the fact that they are just quick snaps, but my back was still a bit too sore for lugging around a full camera bag so I had just one camera and one single short and light lenses with me.

But hey, it could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.